


Breakfast Club

by Spiria



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-21 00:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4807502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spiria/pseuds/Spiria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every so often, Ryoga and Durbe would come together for breakfast and discuss the past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breakfast Club

**Author's Note:**

> For Dey! I don't know how to write either of these characters.

There were times when Ryoga would struggle to remember pieces of the past - smaller moments long gone, little things that built up a life into something bigger. He realized this whenever he and Durbe sat down to talk about "that time" and a foreign topic would crop up that shouldn't have been so alien, leaving the latter to fill in the blanks. Today, they were eating breakfast at a quiet cafe Durbe had taken a liking to when Ryoga felt the onset of a self-inflicted headache.

"Are you hurting, Ryoga? Is your stomach upset?" asked Durbe, brow knit in concern as he set his napkin down.

"No," said Ryoga a little too quickly. "It wasn't anything I ate."

He must set this straight, else Durbe would change his mind about the cafe. Although he'd been a human two lifetimes ago, Durbe's more recent experiences as a Barian had left him out of sorts in the human realm; the mere act of finding a favorite place to eat had been an accomplishment. Here, they always exchanged stories of the past over bread and milk, their unorthodox tales spoken as casually as the discussion of weather. Ryoga would sacrifice this ritual for nothing.

"If it's the crowd, we can move. It's gotten rather noisy," said Durbe, hunching his shoulders to start rising from his seat. At the same time, he eyed the rowdy youths in the diagonal table with mild distaste.

Ryoga grit his teeth, balling his hand against his temple into a fist. "No! It's not them, either. Just sit down, all right? And talk to me about what you mentioned."

Durbe slowly leaned back into his seat, shoulders straightening. "Do you mean the festival?"

"Yeah. Tell me. I . . . don't remember," said Ryoga as he lowered his head, frowning.

"It was an annual event to celebrate the gods. Your people would dance and eat for days. Before you became king, you'd beg me to take you out under my supervision - disregarding that I would need a chaperon of my own," said Durbe in that ever narrative tone of voice.

Ryoga felt his cheeks warm. "Yeah, well, I must have been even younger if this was before I became king."

"That's right. You were very young. In my good conscience, I couldn't deny you what you wanted."

"So what did you do?"

"We left through the front gate," said Durbe.

"The _front_ gate?" asked Ryoga.

"I spoke with Merag and she agreed to assist me. Somehow, she opened the way for us to leave without sneaking around."

Mumbling to himself, Ryoga shook his head. Rio had always had a knack for getting her way, and apparently this privilege extended beyond both her brother and the boundaries of time. If Durbe had no details on the how, Ryoga was content to let this be one of those willful gaps in his memory.

Durbe continued, "It was your first time traveling down to meet the people so late in the evening. I'd brought cowls to keep us warm without drawing too much attention. And you'd brought coins."

Pausing, Durbe gave Ryoga, who scowled and crossed his arms, an inquisitive look. Nothing about this jarred his memory, but Ryoga's ears began to heat alongside his cheeks.

"Don't ask me why I had money!" he hissed in a whisper.

"And so," said Durbe after an incredulous glance, "I insisted that you barter for something small. It had to be easy to carry and conceal if we were to return without looking obvious. To my relief, you weren't deterred by this rule."

"Spill it already. What did I get?" asked Ryoga.

"Rings," said Durbe.

"Rings!" Ryoga nearly spat. "More than one?"

"One for you . . . and one for me."

"And Rio?"

"You said she already owned dozens."

Grimacing, Ryoga propped his elbows on the table and rested his forehead against the back of his hands. The silver of Rio's souvenir from their childhood glinted in the sunlight and he shut his eyes.

"I don't remember wearing a ring," he said, honestly.

"Of course not. You only wore it once, and that was the night you came into possession of it. The craftsmanship was too different from the rest of your outfit; you kept it hidden, as I did mine," said Durbe.

"I can't remember . . . It's such a small thing, and yet . . . "

Ryoga sighed. He heard Durbe pushing his plate aside and felt warm hands wrap around his forearms. The smooth texture of Durbe's hands sparked a memory - "they're so rough!" he'd said, to which he'd been told that that was a natural result of learning the art of the sword, and then his own hands had turned callous over the years. In the present, those soft hands tugged his arms down and Ryoga looked up to meet Durbe's nonjudgmental gaze.

"You may or may not ever remember. But I remember, and I'll hold onto each and every memory for you," said Durbe.

Falling silent, Ryoga faltered under the scrutiny of Durbe's stare and broke eye contact as he moved his arms off the table. He couldn't ask so much of Durbe, who had done too much for him till now, but this was the perfect arrangement. In the end, he settled for picking up what was left of his croissant and eating it.

"Fine. Hold onto them for me, and then share them whenever we have breakfast together. I don't care how loud it gets," he said, pointedly ignoring the still rowdy crowd in the corner.

Durbe smiled. "The volume is mildly inconveniencing . . . however, if that's truly your preference, I don't have any objections."

**Author's Note:**

> And then Durbe shared very lewd stories in such unabashed detail that, afterward, Ryoga wouldn't leave his room for a week.


End file.
